Artist: Vivienne Heckels

Vivienne Heckels has painted from an early age. Her very first competition that she entered, she won a prize, sold the painting and from then had the support and encouragement to continue painting. The main influence on her painting career has been the Flying Art School.
She married when she was 27 and moved out to a mixed farming block in the Bringalily District near Millmerran on the Darling Downs. Her very expressive and dramatic depictions of the drought at that time shocked and offended her family and local community.
These works were exhibited in Canberra at the Rural Outlook 92 Conference, “From The Heartland”. Later these works were also exhibited at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
Since then Vivienne has moved to the outskirts of Toowoomba where she paints and prints in her studio.
Vivienne has won many prizes over the years and her works can be found in several Shire Council offices as well as in private collections in Australia and overseas, and USQ.